Geek Swagger.
Tech News
A new contender enters the ring…
Apr 7th
It's no secret that I've been planning my next laptop purchase for a while now. Â Up until today I was stuck deciding between the HP HDX 16 and the Dell Studio XPS 16. Â Now Acer had to come along and throw a monkey wrench into my plans! Â I was lucky to have narrowed it down that far!
Acer announced a new line of very interesting notebooks at their event in New York today. Â The new line is branded "Aspire Timeline," and they basically amount to machines with the portability of a MacBook or Dell Adamo with a much more attractive price. Â There are three models (13.3", 14.1" and 15.6") and all three are only an inch thick. Â The prices range from $699 - $899. Â They also have incredible battery life; eight hours stock and up to ten with a solid state drive.
Since I'm looking for a machine with a screen that's larger than my current MacBook's the 15.6-incher is my most likely candidate. Â Of course details are sketchy right now and if the laptops don't perform in the end then I'll have to pass. Â Still, in the documentation Acer says that these are for "knowledgeable users who understand performance" so there's hope.
Originally found on Engadget:
iPhone OS 3.0 for Consumers
Mar 19th
I'm sure you all saw this one coming. Â Here's my run-through of what Apple announced at their iPhone OS 3.0 event earlier in the week. Â Since most of what intrigued me in the keynote was related to their "features for consumers" I'm going to dedicate this post to those. Â Some of the SDK additions for developers are interesting but that relies quite a bit on the actual developers putting them into good use. Â So, without further ado:
Cut, Copy and Paste
Shocker of all shockers, Apple finally got their act together and found some way to accomplish the impossible task of integrating cut, copy and paste into the iPhone. Â This has been a long time coming, and I'm glad it's finally here. Â With the new cut, copy and paste feature you'll be able to, surprise, copy and paste text not just inside of one application, but across all applications on the iPhone.
Landscape Mode
Another obvious and necessary upgrade, landscape mode lets you run all of the standard Apple iPhone applications in landscape.  Most importantly, this means that you'll be able to get the larger-format widescreen keyboard that was up until now exclusive to Safari in all of your Apple iPhone applications.  Note that I say Apple iPhone applications because, as far as I know, this will only count for their traditional suite of pre-installed apps (Mail, Notes, Contacts, etc.).  This update should help some of the folks out there with bigger fingers to type a bit more easily, especially in Mail.
MMS
Again, it seems as though with iPhone OS 3.0 Apple is just trying systematically tick off items on a fictional checklist titled "Cell Phone Necessities." Â With MMS you'll finally be able to send and receive multimedia messages on the iPhone including pictures, sound files, and contact cards. Â To me personally this isn't a feature I've been waiting for since you can already do most of those things in email, but I know that a lot of consumers have been deterred from purchasing an iPhone because of its lack of support for MMS.
Voice Memos
Have you ever seen one of those commercials with an older lady using a small voice recorder to remember where she parked, or what to pick up at the grocery store? Â That's basically what voice memos are. Â Using voice memos you can now use your iPhone to record short messages for later playback so you too can overcome your forgetfulness. Â I think this is a feature that seems kind of hokey, but some may like it.
CalDAV and Calendar Subscriptions (.ics)
Getting calendars to sync properly on your touch device has always been a tall order. Â Sure it can be done, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops if you're not using exchange. Â Now that the iPhone calendar app supports CalDAV hopefully keeping my Google Calendar synced won't be as much of an issue. Â I'm pretty excited for this feature, as I'd love to have my calendar events synced perfectly between calendar.google.com, iCal on the desktop and my mobile device. Â Also being able to subscribe to calendars will be a nice addition.
Search and Spotlight
Finally we come to search.  Search has been integrated into all of the standard Apple iPhone apps so you can now quickly and easily search through your inbox, contacts, calendar of events and so on.  Apple has also integrated a new homescreen, Spotlight, which lets you search the entire phone at once.  Say for instance I typed in "Ron" with Spotlight.  Not only would the Spotlight results show the emails I've received from my friend Ron, but also the songs on my iPod by the artist Ronnie Drew and a calendar event I set to have lunch at "Ron's Cafe."  Okay that last one was a bit of a stretch but check out the image below to get a better idea of how it works.
Conclusion
So that's it. Â Like I said there were no bombshells really, and most of the event was devoted to checking off some features that Apple has been inundated with requests for since the iPhone launched. Â Some of the developer SDK additions seem promising but I can't really comment on those until I get a chance to play with the apps that utilize them. Â It was a pretty straight-forward and almost mundane event, but that leaves a lot left for WWDC in June.
Dell Adamo – Style over Substance
Mar 18th
My interest was piqued back at CES when Dell announced their new Adamo line of laptops. They are branded as extravagant, stylish and lightweight alternatives to Apple notebooks for the PC crowd, and given Dell's push to compete aesthetically with some of the prettier laptops on the market this new line truly showed promise.  On Tuesday the Adamo's details were leaked and since then most of my excitement has evaporated.
I'm not going into the details (I'll save that for a link at the end of this post) but this new Adamo laptop is like the Dubai of notebooks. Â That is to say Dell seems to have paid most attention to outward appearances and the look of the laptop but when it gets down to it beauty is only skin deep. Â The actual hardware inside the sleek chassis is pretty anemic. Â The machine's processor only maxes out at 1.4ghz, and that's only on the $2,700 model. Â That's right. Â $2,700! Â The lesser model comes in at $1,999 for a 1.2ghz core 2 duo. Â Sheesh...I think Dell is borrowing one of my least favorite parts of the Apple model - premium pricing.
There is some good to be had.  Like I mentioned the machine is beautiful, and each models come with a 128GB solid state drive.  They've also worked in DDR3 memory which is a plus.  However that's all I can really say about the Adamo that's positive.  One of the best things about purchasing a PC laptop is that you can customize the model by picking and choosing details like processor speed and amount of RAM, but you can't even do that with the Adamo.  You either get the expensive laptop or the even-more expensive laptop, and hey if you want to you can drop some expensive accessories on top of it for good measure. The hardware and price on this 13" beauty just isn't justifiable.
See the whole nitty-gritty here: Dell.com - Dell Adamo Specifications
No ink on my fingers
Mar 1st
The big story this week in the tech world has been the collapse of a few big-name newspapers. There's no question that a lot of the more traditional forms of media have been hurting lately, and it seems the recession has really been the final nail for many of the sources. Given the cost of ink and paper, plus the cost of actually delivering a physical copy of a paper, it's just not feasible for many news outlets to put out a regular edition of their publication anymore.
I guess the question is, what's next? Many people are pointing to devices like Amazon's Kindle as the wave of the future when it comes to literature. It's easy on the environment, and most importantly much cheaper for publications. I heard somewhere that it would be cheaper for the New York Times to purchase a Kindle for every single one of their subscribers rather than continue to produce and deliver their paper. The only problem is that these devices aren't exactly accessible to normal consumers. The recently debuted Kindle 2 costs $359.00. That's a pretty big investment if you're just trying to get a few paper subscriptions a week. You get better deals on those subscriptions (as well as books) but it takes a lot of book purchases to justify the Kindle's price tag.
This switch doesn't really bother me, but I don't really ever read newspapers. I think with the internet and technologies like RSS, news has to become much more targeted. Rather than reading a newspaper I just catch RSS feeds from some of my favorite website on the internet, and none of those sites even have to do with world news. If something big is going down I'll usually hear about it from a site like Twitter or even from a news network on TV. Otherwise, I just stick to the tech and gaming news that I want to read on a daily basis. Again, this is another one of the generational conflicts. I understand that people who grew up before me are more accustomed to reading newspapers and the act of doing so becomes a bit of a tradition. Still, I'm not about to lose any sleep over the death of Rocky Mountain News.
I’m tired of Twitter, kind of want to leave
Feb 24th
I won't, but all of the drama that has resulted from Twitter putting out a featured list of users has really put me off. It's even worse that the most vocal voices are coming from those that are already super users on Twitter. Leo Laporte? Sarah Lane? I have no beef with them but come on, you guys already have so many followers and you're upset you weren't featured so you could get more?
It's all just a popularity contest. It seems like a lot of these people are more concerned with their own notoriety rather than the community, and not just from a followers standpoint but from a content standpoint. Twitter is NOT about how many followers you have or how many people you're following, it's about the content. To see these big names in the tech industry be so upset because they weren't featured and Whole Foods was...it kind of makes me sick to my stomach. Get over it guys.
If you pay more attention to getting actual value out of Twitter you'll be much happier. Focus more on who you're following rather than who's following you. There's no question that Twitter will be a powerful tool not only to normal users like myself but businesses and corporations, and part of that is the potential for direct connections to followers. Still, even if I love a company I'm not going to be following them if they're just trying to advertise to me instead of providing useful content. Not only that but I think people are giving this featured users thing a little too much credit. If a user comes to Twitter and follows a bunch of recommended twitterers they won't be experiencing the site the way it was meant to be. If you ignore that stuff and only follow those who you're legitimately interested in you'll find yourself in love with the site.
</rant>
Windows Mobile 6.5 – the new WinMo user interface
Feb 17th
This is interesting. Everyone knows that Windows Mobile has been looking a little long in the tooth as phone manufacturers race to compete with the iPhone's touch interface. I'm happy to say that with 6.5 Windows Mobile will also enter the manual touch market. The new homescreen does a horizontal scroll to move through the user's day (whether you're navigating through emails, appointments, text messages, or photos) - it sort of reminds me of the Xbox 360's interface in ways. It's a unique way of navigating though, and from what I've seen it's my favorite part of the OS.
From there you can go to the new start menu which houses your applications. The applications are now arranged in honeycomb-shaped bubbles making each a little more accessible with your finger. That's cool because anyone who has used an older WinMo phone can attest that they're difficult to navigate without a stylus most of the time.
The only thing I'm a little concerned about is that the scrolling seemed a little chunky at times. It didn't flow as well as the iPhone's scrolling. They've also worked in the classic "snap-back" for menus, so that when you reach the top or bottom of a menu the content will snap up or down. I think Palm is in some hot water for incorporating that feature because Apple has a patent on it, so I wonder if Apple will go after Microsoft now too. Here's the video:
from on .
Apple cracks down on jailbreaking
Feb 15th
The techosphere is all a-flutter today because of the news that Apple is finally cracking down on the act of jailbreaking an iPhone or iPod Touch. They've officially said that they regard it as illegal. Some people think this is becacuse of the recent applications like Crackulous which let you pirate iPhone apps from the app store. These apps require a jailbroken app, and if Apple doesn't start taking this seriously they could be sued by the people who put apps on the iTunes Store. That makes sense to me.
Personally I have no problem with this becacuse I haven't jailbroken my iPod Touch. My plans were to jailbreak it when I got an iPhone just to see what all of the hype is about, but I guess those plans have flown. It's not something I ever really felt inclined to do. I know there's a solid line-up of apps made specifically for jailbroken touch devices, but I'm more than happy to stick with what I find on the App Store. I will admit that being able to customize my device more than I'm currently able to would be nice, but I have a feeling that Apple might integrate that functionality down the road. If you're interested in this you can go ahead and read the EFF article here:
CES 2009
Jan 15th
Today I'm going to continue our trip through early-2009 conventions by talking about some of the announcements from CES that I thought were interesting.
Let's start with the keynote. This was the first year that Bill Gates wasn't the headliner, but I think Steve Ballmer did a good job as far as Microsoft keynotes go. They didn't really announce much, and a lot of the cool stuff was just review of what we've known for a while. It seemed like a sort of "State of the Union" Microsoft style, where-in the crew informed the crowd about all of the great things the company has been up to for the past year. The highlight was definitely the demo of Windows 7, as well as the (predictable) announcement that the Windows 7 public beta would be out soon. It's out now and I've had an opportunity to play with it a bit, but that's for another day. To see the demo, you can check it out here:
The other major announcement that's caught a lot of people by surprise was the "rebirth" of Palm in the form of the Palm Pre. I have to say I met this bit of news with a great deal of anticipation, but then I watched the presentation and I was stunned. The Palm Pre (running Palm's new Web OS) is, in my opinion, the first true competitor to the iPhone. Of course this is all speculation right now because a device looking cool in a demonstration and actually being cool in your hand are two different things, but Palm seems to be the first company since Apple to use the "Apple approach" in creating a touchscreen smartphone. The OS looks great, featuring an easy-to-manipulate interface and some features that might even have iPhone users drooling. I'll save the details for a later post so I can dedicate enough words to the device to do it justice. Just know I was impressed. You can view the Palm presentation here:
Other than that most of the announcements were hardware and gadget-based. It's impossible to do a complete rundown of all of the devices that were announced, so instead I'll just mention a couple of the things that caught my eye. Firstly, the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is worth mentioning because it has a freakin' slide-out screen! Pretty cool. Also pretty expensive. This new laptop is meant to be a desktop replacement, and finally solves the conundrum of enhancing a laptop's monitor size without sacrificing portability. It's obvious you can hook most laptops up to an external display, but as I mentioned, you lose the ability to roam because your computer is tethered to that display. The W700ds solves this problem by having a 10" slide-out display, giving the user a whole lot of LCD goodness. It's a little niche, but apparently the W700ds has been targeted towards artists since it has built-in Wacom functionality. Not to mention a $3,663 starting price tag. Ouch.
Camera and display technology was also a big hit this year at CES, but I'm going to stay with notebook computers. The Dell Adamo looks quite stunning. It's a very thin machine sporting an almost Macbook Air-like quality to it. The Adamo has been branded a "luxury laptop." It's extremely thin and has some industrial design that's only rivaled by Apple's line of notebooks. Dell was kind of sketchy on the details but it seemed to me that the notebook wouldn't be the only computer or device in the line, perhaps they're looking to debut some multimedia devices with it as well? At any rate this is a product to keep your eyes on, if only because it looks so cool.
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